"A" day arrives, D day approaches

I'm having the kind of day my friend Mike describes in his latest post. In the past I've been known to go months without posting, and I am determined not to repeat that behavior, even though I've been told it was part of my blog's "charm." So this is basically being put up because I feel I should be posting, though I don't have much to say (though that's never stopped me from blathering on for a good 3000 words or more).

Well ok, I am gonna blather - two things. First, I got my first "A" in law school. It was in Entertainment Law, and that teacher only gives out 3 A grades no matter how many people are in the class (one A+, one A and one A-). In Copyright I got a B+ (the fourth highest grade out of 90+ people, thank you very much), but I was pissed that I missed getting one of the A grades. This time I got the 2nd highest grade out of about 60 people. Yeah, I'm bragging a little. I'm damn proud of my little A. I've had a couple A-'s, but this one is just a fresh, clean, unencumbered, free of minuses, straight up A. It's been so long since I've seen one I was starting to forget what they looked like!

Why am I so excited about one little A, you axe? I've been pretty much a straight A student my whole life, excepting my first semester of college when I went a little, how shall we say, apeshit? But by my last year of college I was back on the ball. Straight A's, vice president of a fraternity, president of the interfraternity council, lead actor in three plays, and doing an internship at a Fox TV station an hour away twice a week. I made up for all that by waiting tables for two years and getting to know bartenders on a first name basis. And becoming a bartender myself for a while. You know, just so I could be around bars more.

Anyhoo, the school I'm at now takes extreme pride (or prejudice) in making minced meat out of straight A students. Seriously. After our first semester, our contracts professor spent half the class "counseling" us. The first grades were coming in, and people were losing their shit left and right. Panic, crying, rage, depression, and a lot of defeatism going around. She said to us: "Now I know for a fact that many of you have never received anything less than an A- in your lives, and grades are coming out, and a LOT of you aren't going to like what you see. Especially when you get my exam back. But you have to make an adjustment. Here's how it works at Southwestern..."

She proceeded to explain to us that Southwestern doesn't have "grade inflation." This is the process by which grades are curved so that the average student's performance is taken into consideration when deciding what makes a good grade. It isn't always this simple, but often it consists of the highest grade being raised to a "100" and the rest of the grades being raised proportionately. It results in all students' grades being raised and "inflated." Almost all law schools do this. A few don't. Guess which kind I picked?

Now imagine how that makes the students at schools without "grade inflation" look compared to students at schools with such a curve. If, for example, you're an employer looking at two resumes, and one student has all A's and B's and the other student has a C average, what will you think? It's pretty obvious. One student is either smarter or works harder, or both. If they both went to comparable schools, then there's your answer (a C average at Harvard might still beat out an A average from the Orange County Mail Order School of Law).

But my school goes one step further. They do have a curve, and it is designed, as they will proudly tell you, to keep students in the C range. It is such a hard curve, combined with often sadistically difficult exams, that most students come out of it at the C level. Now you would think most students would be at the C level anyway. But it's entirely possible to have the majority (and thus the average) of students get something in the B or even A range. There's nothing that says that average has to equal C. Except at Southwestern. Here its more like this: take the average performance of the students. That's a C. Now grade the rest accordingly. So if 80% of the class got between a 90-95% on the exam, that would be the C level. In fact, if the professors get an average grade on any one exam that's higher than a 2.1 something, they have to petition the Dean to get a waiver. Meaning the exam was probably too easy. Other schools have open book finals. Other schools have TAKE HOME finals. We have a petition process.

This results in students from my school having to take a specially written form letter, supplied in bulk by the Career Services office, to interviews to explain why their grades "may be different" than the grades of other job candidates who went to different schools. Yeah, that looks good. "I know my grades suck, but check it out - they're designed that way! This letter explains it all. So when do I start?"

One school in Michigan was sued by their students for this very practice. The students claimed it was too hard to get jobs because other candidates' grades were significantly higher. They won, and the school had to adjust their grades and change its practices.

I'm not completely unaware that some students still get straight A's at Southwestern. I know some of them. They're smart (freaks), good-hearted (evil), humble (no-life) people. Ok, I should probably work harder. The thing is, not everyone can do well at my school, no matter how hard they work. It's not possible. That's what I don't think is fair. It's been over twenty years now and the reputation that Southwestern is looking for as a tough school hasn't materialized, at least not in its ranking so far. It does seem to be known for its 33% dropout rate after first year. They don't, however, tell students about this policy/system until they're enrolled. Luckily, the school does have an excellent reputation for its entertainment law program, which is all I really care about. And my entertainment law GPA is significantly higher than my regular grades. Maybe that means I'm interested. Maybe it means I should try harder in my other courses. I don't know, probably a little of both. But for now, I'm going to cherish my little gem of an A for all its worth. It may have to last me a while.

The second thing I wanted to say was just this: I wanna send mad props out to my homey Matt Hasemeyer for spending almost two hours with me on the phone fixing every single problem on BOTH my computers. I am now ready to do what I intended to do when I called my boss and asked him if I could "work from home" today. That is, play Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault. So yeah, I'm gonna study harder. But right now it's time to save the Frogs from the Krauts!!!!